How Sybil Ramkin Fell In Love With Dragons
by thewordweaves
Summary: As the title would suggest, the beginnings of Sybil's long relationship with dragons.  Written for DiscFest on DW & LJ


_Bad_ was never a word Sybil Ramkin would use to describe her life. She had quite a lot to be grateful for. Her father had sent her to a prestigious academy for young women, a position which many others could only envy. And yet she had an immense amount of trouble describing her life as a good one. She had already progressed to the point where she realized that if you didn't have anything nice to say, you didn't say anything at all, just as many of the teachers at this academy repeated over and over and over again. This didn't have much of an effect on any pupils but Sybil, as most of them were all too happy to continue saying things that were most definitely not nice.

Unfortunately for Sybil, she did listen to this particular piece of advice and found that she no longer had very much to say at all. There were several words she could use to describe her peers, but once she started, she knew she wouldn't be able to stop. Sometimes, it was best just not to think it and pretend that she was simply as deaf as they thought she was. Big bossy Sybil Ramkin in her powder blue ribbons, big bossy Sybil Ramkin who would only be wed because of her wealth not because of her beauty, big bossy Sybil Ramkin who was such a daddy's girl, wasn't she ever so funny to watch? Oh, they were kind to her face, hugging her and kissing her cheeks and indulging in the same pleasantries as they exchanged with everyone else. It made it all a bit worse, she had to admit. If they hadn't taken the time to speak with her in the first place, perhaps she could properly despise them without any lingering guilt in the way only a thirteen year old can.

Putting all of that in perspective, it shouldn't have come as a surprise that she slipped out of class early citing an allergy headache so she could find a quiet place to indulge in her lunch for an hour of quiet. Besides, flower arranging was so terribly dull. Even as a gel she had a good head for numbers and science, but that was not something often cultivated in school. They were Young Ladies, and they were expected to know what was befitting of their station. Which was to say, they weren't expected to know much to do with technicalities; those sorts of things better left off to people who were hired to do the maths for them. They learned to cook fussy things on napkins and do needlepoint and how to curtsy to different people and who to smile at and who to simply stare at, but there wasn't much to do with practical work.

Once she wandered out onto the massive estate, lunchbox clutched to her chest, she realized that she had never properly explored the place before, and this was as good an opportunity as any. She lifted her skirts and worked her way along the well kept fields until she saw a barn with its door half ajar, kept well out of the way of the grounds where she and her peers dwelled. Should this have been another day, perhaps Sybil would have decided that this was just a normal barn and that she didn't particularly feel any interest towards farm animals and she would have never discovered swamp dragons. In this particular leg of time, she decided to peer inside.

They were swamp dragons. Tons and tons of them, all buggy eyes and stubby wings and flared nostrils. Never one to falter from a confrontation, she marched straight inside and peered over the guard rail. At first glance, they were a bit ugly, but she could see that there was something more there. How on earth were those massive nostrils good for anything? And their scales were just brilliant. If she could just... touch... one...

Her hand was quickly slapped away by a terrifying apparition that had appeared behind her and one of her long braids was wrapped in a hand like a steel vice. She span her head around, fully prepared to unleash the outraged voice that came with generations of good breeding, but found her voice trapped in her throat at the sight that befell her. Huge, black leather gloves attached to a dense leather trenchcoat and a thick helmet with a tinted faceplate that obscured her assailant's face from recognition. She opened her mouth again, this time ready to scream, but the other woman spoke first.

"Scream and you'll spook them," she snapped. "What exactly are you thinking, bursting in here like this? They get very territorial when they're breeding, you know."

The woman released Sybil, and tore off her helmet to reveal a far skinnier woman than the suit she wore had suggested. She had a long, beak-like nose, ice-blue eyes and the sort of worn face that suggested that she ought to be donning a rigid bun. Instead, she had curly black hair clipped short. "I just wanted to look inside," she managed to say, then remembered her manners. "My apologies, Miss-Mrs..."

She knew this woman from staff dinners, standing a certain measure apart from her more well kept peers. Oh, all the staff at the school were well bred and this woman was unmistakably well bred, but there was an edge to her that was absent in the others. She hadn't known that she worked with the dragons. "Madam will do, young lady. You will get your chance to get your hands on them when you're taught how to handle shoulder-dragons, but you must wait for the next batch of hatchlings to grow."

Sybil stared at the dragons, almost mystified at how curious she was about them. She couldn't explain it. "I don't want to see the shoulder-dragons. I want to see them as they are," she said. "May I?"

"You need to be trained to work around a place like this," Madam said, carefully herding her out of the barn. "There is no class for what you are describing, young-"

"Sybil."

"I beg your pardon?"

"My name is Sybil Ramkin."

For once, this name did not get her anywhere. "Yes, all right, young Sybil. It takes quite a long time to learn the ins and outs of dragon breeding, and I'm sure you'll be wanting to have lunch with your friends."

This time, Sybil's answer was even quicker. "Oh no, I'm quite all right. They won't miss me. What do I need to be trained in?"

"Biology," Madam replied. "You need to know everything about swamp dragons. It's boring, hard work, Sybil. You learn all sorts of nasty things about boils and burns. Nothing a young lady like you will want to know."

"I'm sure it won't be a problem."

Madam stared into Sybil's face, set with determination and eyes bright with the curiosity of a mind gone untrained and she knew at that very moment that she had something of a potential student on her hands. "You will have to muck out the pens. The little buggers can produce feces like nothing else."

"I have a horse at home."

"Ah," Madam added, a coy smile spreading across her rigid face, "and you will have to cut off those pretty braids of yours. Long hair doesn't last long when you're training fire-breathers."

This time, Sybil hesitated. She could hear the taunts now. But what she could also see were lunch hours spent somewhere where she could learn about animals instead of sitting quietly and pretending to be interested in marriages in far-off lands and trying to feel grateful for a life she despised. "I'm sure I can arrange for Daddy to send me a wig," she said firmly. She was brave, but she wasn't suicidal.

"Very well. You will still be expected to attend all your classes and to attend to all of your duties. In exchange for taking time out of my full schedule for your whims, I will expect you to do busywork around the coops. If I suspect that you're wasting my time, I will not hesitate to expel you from my company. Do you understand?"

"Yes, Madam. I do."

"Now off with you before the hour is out."

Afterward, Sybil wasn't sure what possessed her to burst in there and all but demand to be let into the dragon pens. It was awfully rude, she was sure, but she had felt an immediate kinmanship with the dragons. Poor buggers, kept right out of the way there. How did they work? She wondered. Their bodies didn't look like they could work at all.

She spent the next few weeks swept up in a happy daze. Madam - unmarried, she soon learned, her first and only love being swamp dragons - was a strict teacher, but not an unfair one. It felt as if she was learning something useful for once. If nothing else, she had developed quite strong arm muscles from the hours of shoveling. It wasn't that spending time with dragons stopped the bullying remarks, but they no longer mattered as much as they used to. What use were disparaging words when there were these fantastic creatures but a short walk away, free for the studying? There was always more to do and always more to learn. Besides, she was certain that Madam liked the company even if she didn't say as much out loud. Manning the pens really was too much work for one person, no matter how capable.

It was not a typical way to spend one's college years, particularly at the Quirm College for Young Ladies, but Sybil wouldn't have it any other way. It soon became clear that everything else dimmed in the face of dragons. By the end of her education, it soon became clear that what was written simply wasn't enough. There were too many unanswered questions, questions that she was sure that she could answer with Madam's help.

But alas, her time with Madam didn't last long enough and she was soon shipped back to Ankh-Morpork, back home to a lovely, loving home desolately without any dragons whatsoever. If she went back in time to tell her young self that she would yearn for her college days, she was sure that her thirteen year old self would have laughed in her face if she wasn't so well bred. Certainly, Daddy was happy enough to purchase her a dragon but that really wasn't enough. Not enough to study them properly, to really make a name for herself in the swamp dragon community.

It wasn't until she received a tidily written letter from Madam that she realized how she was going to gain her entrance into the world of dragons. It turned out that Ankh Morpork had an abundance of abandoned dragons, first used as cute little tools to light fires or decorations for rich young ladies and they were right there for the rescuing on her very doorstep. Madam was livid, and though Sybil was as well, she saw an opportunity.

There was no longer a purpose in going out with stuffed shirts like that awful Rust, poking at foods that endeavored to be continuously smaller than the last or wrapping herself up in too-tight dresses to chat with people she didn't particularly like, oh no. There wasn't even a purpose in getting the gardener to clean up the ivy anymore, because all of a sudden, that wasn't important anymore.

Look out Ankh-Morpork, because Lady Sybil Ramkin had just found a Cause.


End file.
